How does the conquest impact the native people?

  

Questions below must be answered and needs to be essay format with 500 words minimum, as well, as 12 pt. and Times New Roman font.Use the documents for Assignment 2 and the Norton text Chapter 1 to help answer the question on the impact of the conquest on the native people. How does the conquest impact the native people? Use the description by Cortez, the attitudes perpetuated in the woodcuts and the views of Harriot to illustrate your answer. How does the Columbian Exchange impact the native people?To help you address the question, the following is an outline of points to be covered in the answer. (How are the native people described by Cortez (Document 1) and how are the ideas of Cortez perpetuated by the German woodcuts and engravings (Documents 2-3)? Compare the views of Cortez with those expressed by Thomas Harriot in the quote found in Chapter 1 on page 24 of the Norton text.) Conclude with an analysis of the long range impact of the ideas of Cortes, Harriot and the Columbian Exchange on the native people.
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Chapter 1 First Encounters: Colonial Views on the Native Peoples.
The Problem
Within a few years of Christopher
Columbus’s claim that he had reached
the Indies, most Europeans came to
realize that he had been mistaken.
Instead of reaching the Indies as he
claimed, Columbus had stumbled
across what to Europeans was a new
land populated by strange, new people.
1
And although the discovery,
exploration, exploitation, and
ultimately colonization of the “New
World” was but one aspect of European
expansion in the fifteenthseventeenth centuries, in the end it
was that aspect that would have the
most significant effect on world history.
Europeans became increasingly
fascinated with the New World and its
inhabitants. Explorers’ accounts were
published and widely circulated, as
were artistic renderings of the Indians
1. Although Europeans quickly realized that
the name Columbus confelTed on Native
Americans was inaccurate, the word Indian
continued to be used. Alternative names have
never replaced it.
by European artists, many of whom
had never traveled to the New World
or met a single Indian.
In turn, Native Americans doubtless
recorded their own impressions of
Europeans. Because most Indian
cultures had not developed forms of
writing, these impressions were
preserved orally, largely through
stories and songs. In central Mexico,
however, the Aztecs and other peoples
did record their observations of
Europeans in writing and art. And
although the Spanish conquistadores
(conquerors) attempted to destroy a l l
such records, a few of the written and
artistic renderings have survived to tell
the Indians’ side of the story of the first
encounters.
There is little doubt that the impressions created by these written and artistic works fostered perceptions that
difficult,and ultimately tragic. The European hunger for land and treasure as
well as for a forced labor supply may
have made the tragedies that followed
almost inevitable, and yet Europeans’
early perceptions of Indians were an
important factor in how explorers and
early colonists dealt with Native American peoples and, in the end, subdued
them. At the same time, the early impressions that Indians gained of Europeans (whether passed down orally o:r
by other means) offered to many Native Americans a clear message concerning how they should respond to
white encroachment.
In this chapter, you will be concentrating on the conquest of Mexico by
Hernando Cortes, which took place between 1519 and 1521. In many ways,
that confrontation was typical of the
first encounters between Europeans
and Native Americans. You will be examining and analyzing two separate
sets of evidence: (1) selections written
by Cortes to King Charles I of Spain,
together with some artistic representations of Native Americans by European
artists, and (2) selected written and artistic impressions of Cortes and his
conquistadores by Aztecs and other Native Americans of central Mexico, created within a few years of the events
they described. Your task is twofold.
First, you must use written and artistic
accounts to determine the impressions
that each side formed of the other.
Second, you must reach some
conclusions
about
how
those
impressions (whether totally accurate
or inaccurate) might have influenced
how Europeans and
‘
early colonists dealt with Native Amer
icans and how Native Americans dealt
with them.
Before you begin, we would like to issue a note of caution. When dealing
with the evidence provided by European conquerors such as Cortes or by
European artists, you will not be trying
to determine what the Native Americans the Europeans encountered were
really like but only what Cortes and selected European artists perceived them
to be like. To find out what the diverse
peoples collectively known as Indians
were really like, you would have to consult the works of archaeologists, cul. tural anthropologists, and cultural
geographers. And yet,if we want to determine how Europeans perceived Indians, Cortes’s letters and selected European works of art can provide
excellent clues.
+
The Evidence
EUROPEAN ACCOUNTS
Source1from Francis Augustus MacNutt, Fe’l’tWIIUio Cortes: His Five Letters of
Relation to the Empe:ror CharlesV (Cleveland:Arthur H. Clark Co.,1908), Vol. I,
pp.161-166,211-216.
1. Selections from Cortes’s First Letter to King Charles I of Spain,
July 10,1519.
According to our judgment, it is credible that there is everything in this
country which existed in that from whence Solomon is said to have
brought the gold for the Temple, but, as we have been here so short a time,
we have not been able to see more than the distance of five leagues inland,
and about ten or twelve leagues of the coast length on each side, which we
have explored since we landed; although from the sea it must be more, and
we saw much more while sailing.
.
The people who inhabit this country, from the Island of Cozumel, and the
.Cape of Yucatan to the place where we now are, are a people of middle size,
with bodies and features well proportioned, except that in each province their
customs differ, some piercing the ears, and putting large and ugly objects in
them, and others piercing the nostrils down to the mouth, and putting in
large round stones like mirrors, and others piercing their under lips down as
far as their gums, and hanging from them large round stones, or pieces of
gold, so weighty that they pull down the nether lip, and make it appear very
+CHAPTER 1
First Encounters:
The Confrontation
Between Cortes
and Montezuma
(1519-1521)
deformed. The clothing which they wear is like long veils, very curiously
worked. The men wear breech-cloths about their bodies, and large mantles,
very thin, and painted in the Style of Moorish draperies. The women of the ordinary people wear, from their waists to their feet, clothes also very much
painted, some covering their breasts and leaving the rest of the body uncovered. The superior women, however, wear very thin shirts of cotton, worked
and made in the style of rochets [blouses with long, straight sleeves]. Their
food is maize and grain, as in the other Islands, andpotuyuca, as they eat it in
the Island of Cuba, and they eat it broiled, since they do not make bread of it;
and they have their fishing, and hunting, and they roast many chickens, like
those of the Tierra Firma, which are as large as peacocks.5
There are some large towns well laid out, the houses being of stone, and
mortar when they have it. The apartments are small, low, and in the Moorish
style, and, when they cannot find stone, they make them of adobes, whitewashing them, and the roof iE! of straw. Some of the houses of the principal
people are very cool, and have many apartments, for we have seen more than
five courts in one house, and the apartments very well distributed, each principal department of service being separate. Within them they have their wells
and reservoirs for water, and rooms for the slaves and dependents, of whom
they ha-ye many. Each of these chiefs has at the entrance of his house, but outside of it, a large court-yard, and in some there are two and three and four
very high buildings, with steps leading up to them, and they are very well
built airy prayer places, and ve ry, broad galleries on all sides, and there they
keep the idols which they worship, some being of stone, some of gold, and
some of wood, and they honour and serve them in such wise. These houses’
and mosques, wherever they exist, are the largest and best built in the
t o w n , feather-work and woven stuffs and all manner of ornaments.
Every day, before they undertake any work, they burn incense in the said
mosques, and sometimes they sacrifice their own persons, some cutting
their tongues and others their ears, the body with knives; and they offer
up to their idols all the blood which flows, sprinkling it on all sides of
those mosques, at other times throwing it up towards the heavens, and
practicing any other kinds of ceremonies, so that they undertake nothing
without first offering sacrifice there.
5. These were turkeys, which were unknown in Europe.
6. Temples.
3
They have another custom, horrible, and abominable, and deserving punishment, and which we have never before seen in any other place, and it is
this, that, as often as they have anything to ask of their idols, in order that
their petition may be more acceptable, they take many boys or girls, and even
grown men and women, and in the presence of those idols they open their
breasts, while they are alive, and take out the hearts and entrails, and burn
the said entrails and hearts before the idols, offering that smoke in sacrifice to
them. Some of us who have seen this say that it is the most terrible and
frightful thing to behold that has ever been seen. So frequently, and so
often do these Indians do this, according to our information, and partly by
what we have seen in the short time we are in this country, that no year
passes in which they do not kill and sacrifice fifty souls in each mosque; and
this is practised, and held as customary, from the Isle of Cozumel to the
country in which we are now settled. Your Majesties may rest assured that,
according to the size of the land, which to us seems very considerable, and
the many mosques which they have, there- is· no year, as far as we have until
now discovered and seen; when they ‘do·:not kill and sacrifice in this manner
some three or four thousand souls. Now let Your Royal Highnesses consider
if they ought not to prevent so great an evil and crime, and certainly God,
Our Lord, will be well pleased, if, through the command of Your Royal
Highnesses, these peoples should be initiated and instructed in·our Very Holy
Catholic Faith, and the de-votion, faith, and hope, which they have in their
idols, be transferred to the Divine Omnipotence of God; because it is
certain, that,· if they served God with the same faith, and fervour, and
diligence, they would surely work miracles.
It should be believed, that it is not without cause that God,
permitted that these parts should be discovered in the name of Your Royal
Highnesses, so that this fruit and merit before God should be enjoyed by Your
Majesties, of having instructed these barbarian people, and brought them
through your commands to the True Faith. As far as we are able to know
them; we believe that if there
interpreters and persons who could make
them -understand the truth of the Faith; and their error, many, and perhaps
all; would–shortly quit the errors which they hold, and come to the true
knowledge; because they live civilly arid reasonably, better than any of the
other peoples found in these parts.
To endeavour to give to Your Majesties all the particulars about this country and its people, might occasion some errors in the account, because much
of it we have not seen, and only know it through information given us by the
natives; therefore we do not undertake to give more than what may be accepted by Your Highnesses as true. Yom Majesties m a y ,
were
The Evidence
give this account as true to Our Very Holy Father, in order that diligence and
good system may be used in effecting the conversion of these people, because
it is hoped that great fruit and much good may be obtained; also that His Holiness may approve and allow that the wicked and rebellious, being first admonished, may be punished and chastised as enemies of Our Holy Catholic
Faith, which will be an occasion of punishment and fear to those who may be
reluctant in receiving knowledge of the Truth; thereby, that the great evils
and injuries they practise in the service of the Devil, will be forsaken. Because, besides what we have just related to Your Majesties about the men, and
women, and children, whom they kill and offer in their sacrifices, we have
learned, and been positively informed, that they are all sodomites,7 and given
to that abominable sin. In all this, we beseech Your Majesties to order such
measures taken as are most profitable to the service of God, and to that of
Your Royal Highnesses, and so that we who are here in your service may also
be favoured and recompensed… .
. . . Along the road we encountered many signs, such as the natives of this
province had foretold us, for we found the high road blocked up, and another
opened, and some pits, although not many, and some of the city streets were
closed, and many stones were piled on the house tops. They thus obliged us to
be cautious, and on our guard.
I found there certain messengers from Montezuma, who came to speak
with those others who were with me, but to me they said nothing, because, in
order to inform their master, they had come to learn what those who were
with me had done and agreed with me. These latter messengers departed,
therefore, as soon as they had spoken with the first, and even the chief of
those who had formerly been with me also left.
During the three days which I remained there I was ill provided for, and
every day was worse, and the lords and chiefs of the city came rarely to see
and speak to me. I was somewhat perplexed by this, but the interpreter whom
I have, an Indian woman of this country whom I obtained in Putunchan, the
great river I have already mentioned in the first letter to Your Majesty, was
told by another woman native of this city, that many of Montezuma’s people
had gathered close by, and that those of the city had sent away their wives,
and children, and all their goods, intending to fall upon us and kill us all; and
that, if she wished to escape, she should go with her, as she would hide her.
The female interpreter told it to that Geronimo de Aguilar, the interpreter
whom I obtained in Yucatan, and of whom I have written to Your Highness,
who reported it to me. I captured one of the natives of the said city, who was
7. People who practice anal or oral copulation with members of the opposite (or sam)
who have sex with animals.
walking about there, and took him secretly apart so that no one saw it, and
questioned him; and he confirmed all that the Indian woman and the natives
of Tascaltecal had told me. As well on account of this information as from the
signs I had observed, I determined to anticipate them, rather than be surprised, so I had some of the lords of the city called, saying that I wished to
speak with them, and I shut them in a chamber by themselves. In the meantime I had our people prepared, so that, at the firing of a musket, they should
fall on a crowd of Indians who were near to our quarters, and many others
who were inside them. It was done in this wise, that, after I had taken these
lords, and left them bound in the chamber, I mounted a horse, and ordered
the musket to be fired, and we did such execution that; in two ho urs,.
than three thousand persons had perished.
.
·
In order that Your Majesty may see how well prepared they were, before I
went out of our quarters, they had occupiedall the streets and stationed all their men
but we took them by surprise and they were easily overcome, especially as the chiefs were wanting, for I had already taken.them prisoners. I orderefire to be set to some towers and strong houses, where they defended
themselves, and assaulted us; and thus I scoured the city fighting during five
hours, leaving our dwelling place which was very strong, well guarded, until I
had forced all the people out of the city at various points, in which those five
thousand natives of Tascaltecal and four hundred of Cempoal
good assistance. ·
The Evidence
+CHAPTER 1
First Encounters:
The Confrontation
Between Cortes
and Montezuma
(1519-1521)
Sources 2 through 5 from Hugh HonmThe EuropeanVision of America (Cleveland:
Cleveland Museum of Art, 1975), plates 3, 8, 64, 65. Source 2 photo: The British Library.
2. German Woodcut, 1509.
Source
3:Museo
National de
A.rte Antiga,
Lisbon.
3.
Portuguese
Oil on
Panel,
1550. The
Evidence
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